“A significant bug has been discovered in FaceTime and is currently spreading virally over social media. The bug lets you call anyone with FaceTime, and immediately hear the audio coming from their phone — before the person on the other end has accepted or rejected the incoming call.“

It’s pretty ironic that such an outrageously anti-privacy bug by Apple would be revealed on “Data Privacy Day”.

Just four hours before this story broke, Tim Cook tweeted:

”We must keep fighting for the kind of world we want to live in. On this #DataPrivacyDay let us all insist on action and reform for vital privacy protections. The dangers are real and the consequences are too important.“

Now, it’s not that Apple purposely allowed this bug into iOS 12. Nobody can say in good faith that this is a result of malicious intent on Apple’s part. Apple is one of the only major tech companies that actually concerns themselves with proper data privacy protection and has even turned that stance into a major selling point for many consumers. What this does reveal is that Apple has a horrific quality assurance problem. Apple was plagued with software bug scandals throughout 2018; from the MacOS root login scandal, unintentionally throttled MacBooks, to non-charging iPhones. For some reason, Apple has been seriously struggling with its software reliability.

As with the bugs of 2018, Apple released a statement saying that they’ll release a software update “later this week” to patch what is statistically likely to be their first of many software security bugs of 2019.